On January 15, at a dinner organised by the Northern Reawakening Forum (NRF) in Abuja, the Central Bank of Nigeria governor, Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, once again managed to shock Nigerians out of their wits with his high-octane denunciations of societal foibles. Demonstrating the constancy of spirit and viewpoint that has made him even more famous than his sometimes puzzling financial panaceas ever attempted, Sanusi piquantly suggested that all socio-cultural and religious organisations, which he believed impacted society wrongly, should be banned. He stopped just short of calling for the abrogation of religions altogether. It was probably apparent to him that even for a radical, calling for the scrapping of a religion would have been every whit suicidal.
In the words of this puritan hater of societal quirks: “When I was approached to speak on the economy at the forum called the Northern Reawakening Forum, my initial reaction was that I don’t go to these regional and ethnic groups because I have very strong views against Arewa, Afenifere, Ohaneze and other regional and ethnic groups. And I think these regional and ethnic groups should be banned; including, by the way, Ja’amatu Nasril Islam (JNI), and Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN). They should be banned because they are not religious organisations; they are not cultural organisations; they are political associations in disguise of religion and region.”
Sanusi, it is evident to every Nigerian now, is an iconoclast. He is as fond of demolishing reputations, when he thinks they are built on shallow foundations, as he is eager to destroy symbols of our childish fancies, be it in religion, in politics or in the economy. No one is too high or too low for his shrill attacks. All he asks of himself is whether the object of his scorn is deserving of attack. Once convinced, he does not shirk a fight, and he gives it his impudent all. But by calling for the scrapping of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) and the Ja’amatu Nasril Islam (JNI), two of Nigeria’s leading religious umbrella associations, he seems to take his iconoclasm to new heights. And by adding into the mix his abjuration of ethnic groups such as Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), Afenifere, and Ohaneze Ndigbo, which he disdainfully dismissed as noisome masquerades for pestilential political interests, he climbs what his detractors describe as monomaniacal fondness for self-preserving posturing.
But while it is true that Sanusi’s fiery denunciations have increased in amperage over the years, he makes his enemies squirm even the more because he is seldom misguided. For instance, his description of invitees to Aso Villa as effete champions of dishonest causes can hardly be faulted, for this is as true of Niger Delta militants as it is true of northern and southwest leaders, many of whom have risen to prominence by dint of their capacity for mischief, betrayal and general villainy. His observation that religious leaders perennially engage in the most opprobrious romance with power is so apt that he even seems to underestimate public revulsion against the alliance between religion and politics.
Sanusi’s observations offer an opportunity for a reconsideration of the place and role of religion in national life, that is, if we are capable of such introspection. And though the CBN governor doubtless sounds stiff and sanctimonious in his denunciation of umbrella religious associations, like all his other pithy remarks on the economy, National Assembly profligacy, malodorous aviation policies, and banking malfeasance, he still makes more sense than most public officers.
Rather than take on Sanusi for his daring and irreverence, it may be time for religious leaders to ponder whether in fact they have not become overly political in their dealings among themselves and with the people in power. Religious leaders seem to us to exult when the powerful worship with them and sit in the front rows, and lend personal and state support to multi-million naira religious projects. There is today less emphasis on the content of a man’s character than on whom he portrays himself to be. It is indeed very apparent that our society is laid waste by the scale of our wrongdoings and the sanctimoniousness of our religious observances, with neither religious nor political leaders, nor yet cultural paragons, anxious to bell the cat for change.
Nigeria is one of the most religious societies in the world today. But religion has profited it little, though some cynics point out it could have been worse had there not being at least a public gesture towards some religiosity. The country’s civil service is weak, mediocre and corrupt. The country’s leadership itself, though it revels in the appurtenances of a mosque and a chapel at the State House complex, is increasingly felonious, overtly compromised, and subverted by special interests and overweening cabals. There is no altruism anywhere, and no patriotism left in anyone’s bosom. With depravity elongated and held so high, it is no wonder that the society is wracked both by guilt and by violence.
Sanusi rightly frets that the evil compromises ethnic and religious groups have entered into with the men in power have sunk the country. But the answer may not be in their proscription. If they are proscribed – and this is not possible anyway, no matter what the letter and spirit of the constitution say – other perhaps more insidious groups would simply take their places. Nature abhors vacuum, it is said. What has the country offered in place of socio-cultural organisations? Do we have a sense of nationhood? Contrary to the Lugardian ratiocination suggesting that unity is a physical, geographic thing, the fact is that it is a psychological and spiritual thing. Any deep thinker knows the ethereal rules the real in the same way the spiritual rules the physical and the intangible rules the tangible. Until the nation becomes the mathematical locus of attention and the steely core and substance of our being and existence, ethnic nationalities will continue to offer cultural and psychosocial affinities for groups to bond and coalesce.
Sanusi and many northern leaders, including the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar, have suggested corrupt leadership and poverty predisposed the North to the violence and lawlessness it is witnessing today. The real problem is much more nuanced, as this column has sought many times to clarify. A leadership is first weak before it is corrupt. More, the breakdown being witnessed in the North is a function of the weakness of its binding symbols. Politics no longer offers that bond around which a sense of northern identity could coalesce; nor, sadly, does religion offer safe anchor, for this too has been deeply corrupted and its sinews corroded by years of abysmal politicisation and reckless exploitation.
No society can cohere without a substance or a person around which to coalesce. Once a society loses its inner core, its soul or its mind, it will begin to fracture badly. The remnant sense of northernerness which the people of the North still have today was partly a creation of the Sardauna of Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello, as it was a creation, in a different sense and under a different era, of Uthman dan Fodio. There must always be something or someone to give a society its sense of being or drive. Modern analysts, like US President Barack Obama during his visit to Ghana, talk of creating strong institutions rather than strong personalities in order for stability and peace to be engendered. This is only true when that society is already driven by persons or sets of values that propel it into greatness and competitiveness. Except during occasional periods in their histories when they require strong personalities, many Western societies have sets of values and lodestars to propel them into greatness. Nigeria does not have either a set of lofty values or even the strongmen to give the country form and substance.
Since amalgamation, the Sardauna was the first and the last to play that role for the North; Chief Obafemi Awolowo for the West; and Dim Chukwuemeka Ojukwu, more than the great Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, as I have argued in this place before, for the East. In the absence of these eminent men, their societies will need a set of values, religious codes, and cultural templates to make their societies cohere. The denudation of these values and codes and templates, which in the case of Nigeria are at different stages, much more than poverty, predispose societies to anomie. Indeed, what make Nigeria to maintain a semblance of stability are the socio-cultural organisations which Sanusi deprecates. The groups have been corrupted, as the CBN governor notes, and religions attenuated by the anthropomorphism of our various cultural antecedents, but they still have their uses.
We can discern from the imprecise thoughts of Mallam Sanusi the salient message that our society is endangered by many factors. My opinion is that that danger comes principally from a lack of knowledge. We must strive to understand what ails us first before we find the panaceas. There is no competent national leadership that understands what must be done, and the regions are decaying into anarchy and unraveling into fragments depending on what stages of leadership failure or value attenuation they are. Mr Obama speaks of strong institutions. But he speaks only about a minute part of the truth. After all, Richard Kagan, Paul Wolfowitz and the neo-conservatives could not have designed the failed New American Century project if they did not have a sense of America’s manifest destiny (Global leadership anchored on military strength and moral clarity). What is ours? Through their prisms, the Southwest was reminded of its sense of being by Awo, the North by Sardauna, and the East by Zik/Ojukwu. Who has tried to define for Nigerians who they are, what the Nigerian dream is, and what its manifest destiny should look like? If this definition had been made, it is doubtful whether any rational leader, let alone a sensible historian, would suggest that, of all things, we should be celebrating the centenary of Lugard’s amalgamation.
